It was best, to prevent any doubt, that I
should myself cut the tress of hair from the woman's head. The chief of
the colony, in response to my request, said he was quite willing that she
should visit Adelaide for this purpose. She was agreeable herself;
curious as to the scenes, strange to her, which she might witness in
Adelaide. As we are all born hungry, so we are all born curious; merely
we differ in degree. In due time she arrived, and I secured the necessary
sample of her hair, which remains, probably, in the Auckland Museum.
'Delighted with a new stock of clothes, the woman left Adelaide on her
return to the island, this also having been arranged. She was to light a
fire on a crag of the mainland, at which signal her lord and master would
put over with his boat to fetch her. Now recur my conversations with him,
which included the question, "Is it not rather bad that you should all be
living here with these native women?"
'His answer, coming from such a quarter, surprised me, and proved him a
regular controversialist. "It does nobody harm," he argued, "and we are
much more comfortable than we should otherwise be. There was nothing
hasty in what we did; every step was taken deliberately. Knowing we could
not re-enter the world, and there being no settlers, then, in these
parts, we considered: Could we not found a small nation ourselves? The
greatest nation of ancient times, cast in very similar circumstances, did
not feel it wrong to carry off, by force, the females of another people.
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